Cassandra Pendragon
Spending time with Greta had always been exhausting and I wasn’t quite sure if I preferred the physical kind I was already used to or the headache her last statement had inflicted on me. Was I really that stuck up? Maybe. Still, the whole topic had irked me to no end, especially since she had basically told me not to judge, a sentiment I shared but which also had a can of worms attached to it I wasn’t particularly willing to open. Choice, education, responsibilities, societal structure, there was so much to include that my head started spinning every time I tried to actually figure out how I regarded prostitution in the literal sense. For now, it didn’t matter much either way but I knew that I wouldn’t manage to shove the topic aside, at least not until I had made up my mind. For the time being, I was going to do my best to ignore it, though.
With an effort I rearranged my features into a more detached expression and quickly crossed the street, Greta at my side. Making our way across the clogged path of cobbled stones and mud was positively easy, since the passer-bys were stopping in their tracks to allow us through. It wasn’t the unpleasant “give them a wide berth” kind of thing either, the handful of smiles and raised hands proved that they were simply accommodating to an unusual degree, and the few gazes I caught while snaking past trolleys and sweating carriers were filled with respect rather than loathing or fear. We had to have done something right.
The entrance looked pretty much the same as I remembered and with a quick knock I pushed open the creaky door, expecting to be assaulted by a miasma of spilled liquor, bat droppings and sweat but to my surprise I only smelled a faint hint of an herbal disinfectant and the sales room was squeaky clean. Even the cages had been cleared out and their occupants… well, they had either been set free, transported to the basement or ended up in a stew.
A newly attached bell rang as soon as we entered and Zuma’s deep, creaky voice sounded a minute later from the top floor: “coming, gimme a mo’.” Heavy steps thudded down the wooden stairs and a few heartbeats later a surprisingly well dressed, clean, blind and sober bat-fanatic marched through the back door. “Welcome. What can I do…” his face contorted as he sniffed the air and immediately blurted out: “oh hells, no! I thought you’d have forgotten all about me. Big surprise, the alchemist never came back, that’s why I didn’t…”
“Don’t care,” I cut him off while I sent a mental signal to my bracelet and watched it glide toward me. A genuine smile spread across my face when the cold metal settled around my arm. It was a rather poor substitute for a real touch but beggars can’t be choosers, right? “I’m not here to listen to your yapping.” I approached the counter and when he backed away I rapped my knuckles against the wood. “Ever since we met, you tried to drown your sorrow in sweet wine and even sweeter lips. Why did you stop?”
“Like I said, I thought you wouldn’t come back. And I ran out of coin,” he added under his breath.
“So you’re back to your old ways? Where are your bats?”
“Sold. I’m done with large animals. Figured I’d try my hand at something tastier. I’ve been playing around with a few plants over the last day. Why? And why are you here? Whatever you think I might know it can’t matter any more, can it? They’re all dead.”
“Not quite yet but we’re getting there. Playing around with some plants?” He shrugged.
“Poppyseeds, grapes, angel trumpets, coca… I’ve never much cared for their effect but over the last days… it’s fascinating what some substances can do to you… or for you, depending on the dosage. Trying to combine their properties plays to my strengths and might yield much more valuable and also useful results than what I’m used to. One successful new breed and I might just be able to enjoy my retirement in peace and far away from here. Having your life flash before your eyes several times a week has a tendency to make you reconsider your choices. Again… why?”
“Because she wants to pull the information from your feeble, human mind, devour your heart and take over the world with more refined narcotics,” Greta answered dryly.
“Seriously,” Zuma and I said at the same time, him staring blindly and desperately at the dryad, who had heralded his worst nightmares, and me rolling my eyes.
“No, you imbecile,” she added. “We’re here for what you can still do, not what you have done. If you really are able to extract specific… properties,” she had probably hesitated to find a more adequate synonym for genes, “from living things and introduce them to another species or even a different individual of the same species we might have some use for you.” His brows creased with suspicion and he surreptitiously turned his head from left to right.
“Do you, now? From what I’ve heard you’ve already planted yourselves firmly at the centre of the new order. What would you need a blind, crazy, old dabbler in alchemy for? I don’t do perfumes”
“I usually don’t wear them,” I chuckled and whirled around on the spot, arms spread wide, to face him fully, “and I wouldn’t trust you to not put in some poison ivy anyways. No, I wouldn’t want your services for anything personal but when it comes to business… tell me, do you think the last battle has been the end of it?” He snorted and I was forced to watch a rather disgusting spray of spit and even less tasteful liquids descend in slow motion, one of the downsides of my enhanced perception.
“If you believe that, I’ll have a nice, solid boat to cross the ocean with for you. I’m not a trained magician but we all heard him, in the end. You beat him off, but he’s still out there and waiting. It’s not a question of if but rather when he will return.”
“Precisely. One more question. Do you know the fiercest enemies anyone has to deal with, in battle as well as war?” He frowned and replied hesitantly:
“Hunger, poison and diseases?”
“As well as subversive ideas but that’s pretty much it. Each of those can make you lose a fight before the first blow has even landed. Now, why do you think I’ve been telling you this?”
“Can’t help much with ideas, but the other three…” he sighed. “Alright, let’s get to the point. What do you want?”
“We don’t know enough about you and your trade to tell,” Greta interjected, “but what do you think you can accomplish?”
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“Depends on the incentive. Less if it’s about keeping my neck well away from a noose, more if there’s a… let’s say upside.” I had to grin.
“So, despite your epiphany about your life’s choices you haven’t changed a bit. Figures. I do believe in balancing the scales, though. You owe us. Not that much but you already know yourself that you have a debt to pay off. After that…” I shrugged, which escaped him entirely, “I’m sure we can come to an understanding, provided your services are worth it.”
“You wouldn’t be here, if you thought otherwise. Retirement. That’s my price. I want to pick a place, any place really, and I want you to provide me with enough gold to buy a house and keep me smothered in wine and women for as long as I can still manage to enjoy either.” I whistled.
“Judging from the last few days that’s quite a lot of gold. What makes you think you’re worth it?”
“From what I’ve heard you’ve got the disease and poison portion covered already. Gimme a few months and I’ll have a solution to keep everyone around here well fed. Gimme a year and I’ll have a bunch of poisons and drugs that can do at least as much damage as spells. Gimme two years and some resources and I’ll have your soldiers fly on winged mounts or dig through the earth on moles. I am good at what I do, really good, and if you can provide the materials I can make almost anything happen. But again you already know this, otherwise you wouldn’t have come. What’s this really about? Loyalty? Are you trying to decide if I’m worth the risk? Sorry, but that’s something you’ve got to decide yourselves.”
“Don’t we know it,” Greta mumbled distractedly while she inspected one of the empty cages. “How long have you bred bats for?”
“Couple of years. The really interesting things happened after I was handed the syringe, though. Incidentally, did it survive? You have no idea how useful that artefact has proven to be.”
“No, it burned out when they used it to harvest blood from my fiancée,” I answered icily, “and it might be a good idea to never mention it again.” He nodded enthusiastically.
“Duly noted. So, what’s going to happen now? Word on the street has it that you’re going to leave quite soon. What do you expect me to do in the meantime? Sit on my ass and wait for instructions?”
“Not quite,” I replied slowly. “You’ve already made it plenty clear what we can expect from you when it comes to optimising crops and drugs but there’s something else. How much do you know about life and magic, or rather about the forces that govern both?” He shrugged again.
“Not too much. What I’ve needed for my experiments. I do know that there are different… layers that make up a living being and that magic pretty much boils down to manipulating them.”
“That’s already more than most mages know,” Greta commented. “Where did you gain this knowledge?”
“I travelled in my youth. I’ve seen different schools, different tribes and how they use magic. At first I didn’t understand why some indigenous, primitive casters could heal or transform creatures much more efficiently than even the most sophisticated elven scholars I’ve met. It took me a few years to figure out that they’re manipulating different expressions of creation.”
“Impressive,” I grudgingly admitted. “Can you… do you feel them, or rather, can you use those different expressions, as you called them?”
“No. I’m pretty awful when it comes to mundane spells but I can use them rudimentarily, hence I chose alchemy. I can feel the rest but I can’t… touch or manipulate those energies.”
“How did you go about evolving your bats, then?”
“Patience and a few clever work arounds. Do you want me to show you?”
“Very much so,” Greta answered, “but not now. That’s going to take more time than we have.”
“And I’m asking for a specific reason,” I added. “The Emperor, Amon, the monster who attacked Free Land or whatever you want to call him, he’s a darn genius when it comes to manipulating the innermost layer of a living being. To a degree where he can actually use his own essence to flit in and out of others. I’m mostly interested in two things. One, can it be prevented, could you create something like a… vaccine and two, is it possible to follow such a jump? Is it possible to create an elixir or something similar, that, when fed to one of his vessels, would stick with him, even in a new body?” The dryad blinked in surprise since I hadn’t told her what I wanted him to do. It hadn’t been on purpose, though, considering I had only just come up with the idea.
“Possible? Sure. Realistic? Not so much. Not without much time and even more corpses along the way. Playing around with the building blocks of life has a tendency to go wrong, the more so the more integral the part you mean to change is. Unless you’ve got a long line of suicidal volunteers waiting I don’t see a way and I can’t use animals as a substitute either. On a superficial level they’re similar to us, but as soon as it comes to magic…” he spread his hands helplessly.
“I see. So it can’t be done?”
“Not without more sacrifice than you’re prepared to suffer, I’d imagine.” Oh boy, I was decently convinced that quite a few people had been treated to that particular line throughout history.
“What exactly would you need your… guinea-pigs for?” His blind eyes quivers as he reflexively tried to focus on me.
“You’re asking me about an aspect of magic I don’t know much about. From the top of my head… I’d need to… cut some open, figuratively, to get a better understanding of what I’m dealing with and then I’d have to simply… well, experiment. Trial and error. That’s how it goes.”
“So you basically don’t need a sentient creature but a… simulacrum to play with.”
“If it’s sophisticated enough it might work but if you’re capable of creating one I don’t see why you would need me in the first place. If you can mimic a living creature artificially, you should be able to manipulate its energies however you like.”
“If only…,” I paused, trying to figure out if I might be able to create something suitable but in essence he was right. With a little help it might have been possible but to actually mirror the intricacies of the real thing I’d need much more knowledge than I currently had. Damn it, I really needed a few months to get to know my own abilities. Unfortunately online courses for growing immortals were quite rare and even though the mountain of memory crystals Mephisto had left behind was more or less guaranteed to contain the information I needed, it was still similar to searching for a needle in a haystack. No way in hell would I be able to get a hold of the necessary tidbits within a reasonable timeframe. Goddamned useless demon. And Zuma pulling a Dr. Mengele (in case you’re lucky enough to not know who he was, google it, preferably on an empty stomach) on my watch wasn’t going to happen, considering I had been the one to drown the spineless, perverted fuck in Brazil. But that’s a story for another time.
“Seems like it’s not going to happen for now,” I finally said. “Alright then, here’s the deal. What we need is a way to sustainable feed the people without depending on trade. Once the first aerial battles are fought there might be prolonged periods of time without any ships on the horizon. The fields around here aren’t enough. We need crops that grow faster and yield more. Since you’ve already developed an interest in plants it shouldn’t be too difficult to apply your knowledge.”
“Are you expecting me to simply pull some wonder wheat from my ass? Because that’s not going to happen. Things like that need time, generations of modified seeds…” I raised my hand to shut him up.
“I know. Realistically, how long is it going to take?”
“To feed the whole town on the few acres of workable land? Months, at the very least.” I heard him sniff the air again before he added: “your companion smells like a plant herself. Is she… are you by any chance one of the fey?” Greta snorted.
“Not even close. I’m a dryad, a nature spirit.”
“Even better. With your help I think I can speed up the process. I’m not even going to ask about compensation, I assume that’s the part where I pay back my debt?”
“In a way,” I replied. “You’re not going to go hungry but I won’t pay for you to indulge. As for your retirement… make it happen before the year runs out and we’ll talk.”
“That’s not even five months,” he groaned, “and I need to sleep.”
“Don’t worry,” Greta interrupted him with a nasty smile I knew all too well, “I don’t and I’ll do my best to keep you on your toes. Why don’t we begin tomorrow? Come to the Garden at sunrise and we’ll take it from there. No need to dawdle, is there?”